Craigslist personals, some subreddits yanked after passage of FOSTA

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Craigslist shut down its personals section on Friday in response to the passage of H.R. 1865, the Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act (FOSTA) bill, in both houses of Congress on Wednesday.

Ditto for some related subreddits. Both moves have likely been taken to avoid lawsuits in the wake of the government gutting the law that protects online sites and services from responsibility for content posted by users.

Reddit announced on Wednesday that it would ban subreddits having to do with certain transactions, including “paid services involving physical sexual contact.”

Any tool or service can be misused. We can’t take such risk without jeopardizing all our other services, so we are regretfully taking craigslist personals offline. Hopefully we can bring them back some day.

To the millions of spouses, partners, and couples who met through craigslist, we wish you every happiness!

Happiness? There’s a long list of people who are not happy with this bill, which makes online prostitution ads a federal crime and amends Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act (CDA). Section 230 states that websites are immune from legal responsibility for content submitted by others.

Here’s an extremely truncated list of who’s against this bill:

Constitutional law experts, including the Department of Justice (DOJ). In passing the bill, Congress ignored the DOJ’s warning that it was so poorly drafted that it would actually make it more difficult to prosecute sex traffickers. The DOJ also called into question whether the bill would pass Constitutional muster.

Notre Dame law instructor Alex F. Levy said in a guest post on Eric Goldman’s Technology & Marketing Law blog that the bill will likely run into trouble in the courts, given that it affects constitutionally protected speech. Critics note that the bill flattens all the differences between, for example, sites that sell trafficked victims and sites devoted to support for the victims who’ve escaped their captors, as well as failing to differentiate between consensual and non-consensual sex work.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) said FOSTA is “a bill that silences online speech by forcing internet platforms to censor their users.” The EFF noted that this amendment to Section 230 is particularly worrying because…

[It’s] the most important law protecting free speech online. Section 230 protects online platforms from liability for some types of speech by their users. Without Section 230, the internet would look very different… in absence of Section 230 protections, noncommercial platforms like Wikipedia and the Internet Archive likely wouldn’t have been founded given the high level of legal risk involved with hosting third-party content.

These bills* target websites that are widely and inaccurately believed to be hubs of trafficking activity when it is precisely those websites that enable people in the sex trades to do their work safely and independently, at the same time as they make it easier for authorities to find and investigate possible trafficking cases.

*Plural bills, since the Senate passed a version of FOSTA that incorporated the earlier Stop Enabling Sex Traffickers Act (SESTA, S. 1693).

Massey says that the bill will criminalize the very websites where she found “the generous communities and actionable advice I needed to get out of and avoid exploitative sex work situations.”

Though the bill is meant to target sites hosting sex work advertisements, it covers online forums where sex workers can tip each other off about dangerous clients, find emergency housing, get recommendations for service providers who are sex worker-friendly, and even enjoy an occasional meme. These are often on the same websites where advertisements are hosted.

Before you say, ‘Just get rid of the ads, then,’ know that online ads themselves are one of the greatest tools for protecting yourself as a sex worker: They make it possible to screen clients, arrange safe indoor working conditions, and establish a communication record with clients that street-based work doesn’t provide.

On the lawmaker side, those against the bill are scant:

Only two senators. Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Oregon), from the Senate floor on Wednesday, as quoted by Reason:

In the absence of Section 230, the internet as we know it would shrivel… Civic organizations protecting their right to free speech could be [ruined] by their more powerful political opponents [and] there would be an enormous chilling effect on speech in America.

Wyden said that’s why big, established online players like Facebook supported the bill: “Because it would pull up the ladder in the tech world” and keep out new companies that can’t afford to get in.

The only other senator to join Wyden in his “No” vote was Rand Paul (R-Kentucky).

So why?

With all these opponents voicing clear-eyed reasons about why the bill isn’t the way to achieve what it sets out to do, why did it sail through with a 97-2 vote?

The passage of SESTA/FOSTA, now awaiting President Trump’s signature – he’s applauded the bill as “an important step forward” – was hailed by some anti-sex-trafficking groups and law enforcement as an important tool to fight online prostitution of teenagers.

It’s easy to see where the impulse to gut Section 230 comes from. Young women who’ve been prostituted on Backpage – an online classifieds site – have been blocked when trying to sue the website, with courts specifically citing Section 230 as protecting such sites from liability.

Section 230 is (or was, depending on how the president’s signature goes) a strong legal shield to protect websites from being held liable for what others do online, but the majority of Americans disagree with the premise. According to a 2017 report from the Pew Research Center, 79% believe that online companies and platforms should be held responsible for users’ behavior or content.

Note that while some anti-sex-trafficking groups applauded SESTA/FOSTA, there were notable exceptions. As Massey noted, the nation’s largest network of anti-trafficking organizations, The Freedom Network, all but begged legislators not to mess with Section 230. To do so will lead to harm to those it seeks to help, it said.

Internet sites provide a digital footprint that law enforcement can use to investigate trafficking into the sex trade, and to locate trafficking victims. When websites are shut down, the sex trade is pushed underground and sex trafficking victims are forced into even more dangerous circumstances. Street-based sex workers report significantly higher levels of victimization, including physical and sexual violence. This means that trafficking victims face even more violence, are less likely to be identified, with less evidence of their victimization.

9 comments on “Craigslist personals, some subreddits yanked after passage of FOSTA”

This will be the end of most dating sites, as those that would advertise on the sites that are gone will move to where single/lonely people are. Which will force them to shut down like Craigs list did. Expect night clubs to get more business as people will have to get out of their chairs to even talk/chat with others now.

The law was designed, per legislative intent, to clean up both of a major issue, sex trafficking. While it is widely agreed that some personals were indeed harmless, the intent here was to weed out the porn-fed sex traffickers who prostitute women as sex slaves, and do many other abhorrent acts sexually with people. The rest of Reddit, Craigslist, and similar sites that offer services and discussions of a more harmless nature, are all still protected by other laws and the First Amendment. And th First Amendment does not protect pornography or sex traficking. Afte all, a Supreme Court of the United State wrote in a pornography case decades ago where the conviction was upheld by that court, rferencing ‘smut’, a common name for porn ‘I know it when I see it’, and the anti-sex trafficking intent of FOSTA-SESTA will be upheld in any court of law and on appeal

While I do believe websites should know what people are posting on their platforms I think they should only be responsible after its been proven that they know that content was being posted. Also shutting everything down really doesn’t help. its just making sure the public doesn’t see it happening. There are better ways to solve these issues and not once do they ask the sex workers themselves how they would fix these things.